In 1929 in San Pedro, a large section of a seaside neighborhood began slipping down a cliff and into the ocean. It had something to do with tectonic shifting. Or maybe God didn't like the homeowners' lawn furniture, and decided to smite the shit out of them. Either way, thanks to the residents' quick thinking, all but two of the street's domiciles were saved -- no mean feat, considering that the collapse was moving at 11 inches per day at its peak. (I'm just going to assume that the two houses that didn't make it were occupied by stoners who were warned repeatedly that they needed to move, but kept saying they'd "get around to it.")

The remains have come to be known as, simply, the Sunken City. They're still there today, although blocked off by a tall steel fence and marked with myriad "No Trespassing" signs. The local residents, showing exactly the amount of respect for law and order a situation like this deserves, took a blowtorch to the fence and cut themselves an opening, so now this armageddon-esque oasis can be enjoyed by all, or at least anyone who's not a huge pussy-ass.

On the other side of that fence are massive slabs of pavement, tossed all over the hillside at wild angles, slathered in hyper-vivid graffiti art, like the background of an 80's video game with a name like "Apocalypse SKATE!" Weed-choked roads go shooting off cliffs into nothingness. Old water pipes jut from rock faces. Vertical sewer-pipes rise like stalactites. They shot Donny's funeral scene in The Big Lebowski here. Stop pretending you have somewhere else to be. ___________________________________